Biocompatible material - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

In surgery

Surgery

Surgery is an ancient medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate and/or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, or to help improve bodily function or appearance.An act of performing surgery may be called a surgical...

, a biocompatible material (sometimes shortened to biomaterial) is a synthetic or natural material used to replace part of a living system or to function in intimate contact with living tissue

Biological tissue

Tissue is a cellular organizational level intermediate between cells and a complete organism. A tissue is an ensemble of cells, not necessarily identical, but from the same origin, that together carry out a specific function. These are called tissues because of their identical functioning...

. Biocompatible materials are intended to interface with biological systems to evaluate, treat, augment or replace any tissue, organ

Organ (anatomy)

In biology, an organ is a collection of tissues joined in structural unit to serve a common function. Usually there is a main tissue and sporadic tissues . The main tissue is the one that is unique for the specific organ. For example, main tissue in the heart is the myocardium, while sporadic are...

or function of the body. Biomaterials are usually non-viable

Viability

Viable or viability is the ability of a thing to maintain itself or recover its potentialities.Viable or viability may also refer to:...

, but may also be viable.

A biocompatible material is different from a biological material such as bone

Bone

Bones are rigid organs that constitute part of the endoskeleton of vertebrates. They support, and protect the various organs of the body, produce red and white blood cells and store minerals. Bone tissue is a type of dense connective tissue...

that is produced by a biological system

Biological system

In biology, a biological system is a group of organs that work together to perform a certain task. Common systems, such as those present in mammals and other animals, seen in human anatomy, are those such as the circulatory system, the respiratory system, the nervous system, etc.A group of systems...

. Artificial hips, vascular stent

Stent

In the technical vocabulary of medicine, a stent is an artificial 'tube' inserted into a natural passage/conduit in the body to prevent, or counteract, a disease-induced, localized flow constriction. The term may also refer to a tube used to temporarily hold such a natural conduit open to allow...

s, artificial pacemaker

Artificial pacemaker

A pacemaker is a medical device that uses electrical impulses, delivered by electrodes contacting the heart muscles, to regulate the beating of the heart...

s, and catheter

Catheter

In medicine, a catheter is a tube that can be inserted into a body cavity, duct, or vessel. Catheters thereby allow drainage, administration of fluids or gases, or access by surgical instruments. The process of inserting a catheter is catheterization...

s are all made from different biomaterials and comprise different medical devices.

Biomimetic materials are not made by living organisms but have compositions and properties similar to those made by living organisms. The calcium hydroxylapatite

Hydroxylapatite

Hydroxylapatite, also called hydroxyapatite , is a naturally occurring mineral form of calcium apatite with the formula Ca53, but is usually written Ca1062 to denote that the crystal unit cell comprises two entities. Hydroxylapatite is the hydroxyl endmember of the complex apatite group...

coating found on many artificial hips is used as a bone

Bone

replacement that allows for easier attachment of the implant

Implant (medicine)

An implant is a medical device manufactured to replace a missing biological structure, support a damaged biological structure, or enhance an existing biological structure. Medical implants are man-made devices, in contrast to a transplant, which is a transplanted biomedical tissue...

to the living bone

Bone

.

Surface functionalization

Surface functionalization

Surface modification is the act of modifying the surface of a material by bringing physical, chemical or biological characteristics different from the ones originally found on the surface of a material....

may provide a way to transform a bio-inert material into a biomimetic or even bioactive material by coupling of protein

Protein

Proteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...

layers to the surface

Surface

In mathematics, specifically in topology, a surface is a two-dimensional topological manifold. The most familiar examples are those that arise as the boundaries of solid objects in ordinary three-dimensional Euclidean space R3 — for example, the surface of a ball...

, or coating the surface with self-assembling peptide scaffolds to lend bioactivity and/or cell attachment 3-D matrix.

Different approaches to functionalization of biomaterials exist. Plasma processing

Plasma processing

Plasma processing is a plasma-based material processing technology that aims at modifying the chemical and physical properties of a surface.Plasma processing techniques include:*Plasma activation*Plasma etching*Plasma modification*Plasma functionalization...

has been successfully applied to chemically inert materials like polymer

Polymer

A polymer is a large molecule composed of repeating structural units. These subunits are typically connected by covalent chemical bonds...

s or silicon

Silicon

Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. A tetravalent metalloid, it is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon, the nonmetal directly above it in the periodic table, but more reactive than germanium, the metalloid directly below it in the table...

to graft various functional group

Functional group

In organic chemistry, functional groups are specific groups of atoms within molecules that are responsible for the characteristic chemical reactions of those molecules. The same functional group will undergo the same or similar chemical reaction regardless of the size of the molecule it is a part of...

s to the surface

Surface

of the implant. Polyanhydrides

Polyanhydrides

Polyanhydrides are a class of biodegradable polymers characterized by anhydride bonds that connect repeat units of the polymer backbone chain. Their main application is in the medical device and pharmaceutical industry. In vivo, polyanhydrides degrade into non-toxic diacid monomers that can be...

are polymers successfully used as a drug delivery materials.

Care should be exercised in defining a biomaterial as biocompatible, since it is application specific. A biomaterial that is biocompatible or suitable for one application may not be biocompatible in another.

See also